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A pleasant warmth spread through her veins. His reasons didn’t really matter. She hadn’t failed. She’d managed fine, she knew she had. She’d made all the right clinical decisions and she hadn’t needed his help.
She straightened her slim shoulders and gave a small smile, suddenly feeling more confident.
He’d tested her and she’d passed with flying colours.
So now what would happen?
Jago closed the door of his office and ran long fingers through his cropped hair.
What the hell was the matter with him?
He’d sent a woman to deal with a bunch of drunks.
And not just any woman, he’d sent Katy. Katy, who was about as robust as a spring flower.
What had he been thinking of?
But he knew the answer to that, of course.
He’d been trying to prove that she couldn’t cope with the rigours of practising medicine in the A and E department. He’d been trying to scare her away.
Because he didn’t want her here, on his territory, looking at him with those wide violet-blue eyes.
Just thinking of her exceptionally beautiful, heart-shaped face made him harden in an instinctive and powerful male reaction, and he gave an exclamation of disgust.
Hadn’t he learned anything? Was he really that basic that he could forget everything just to satisfy the most primitive of male urges?
What was it about Katy Westerling? True, she was astonishingly beautiful but he met beautiful women all the time and they didn’t make him abandon his usual caution towards members of the opposite sex.
He had to keep reminding himself that she wasn’t what she seemed.
That the innocent aura that aroused a man’s most fiercely protective instincts was actually just an act.
His hands tightened into fists and his hard jaw clenched as he remembered the photographs her father had shown him.
She might have been a virgin when he’d first slept with her, but less than four weeks later she’d slept with another man.
I love you, Jago.
Remembering th
e incredibly intimate pictures he’d seen, he growled low in his throat and strolled across to the window of his office which looked out on the ambulance bay.
It was eleven years ago, he reminded himself. And eleven years was a long time. Enough to change a person, and Katy had obviously changed.
The old Katy had been deliciously shy and tongue-tied but the Katy he’d seen in action today was very different from the girl he’d made love to so long ago. Far from buckling under the challenge he’d set her, she’d coped well.
In fact, she’d handled those drunks with an admirable level of skill and tact. There had been every sign that they could have become violent at any minute but she’d reacted with textbook efficiency and had successfully defused any suggestion of aggression on the part of the patient and his friends.
She’d behaved as though she’d been operating totally within her comfort zone, which didn’t make a scrap of sense. When would Katy Westerling, with her over-privileged, protected upbringing, ever have been exposed to drunk, violent men?
His dark brows locked in a frown as he puzzled over her complete lack of concern. She hadn’t even seemed to notice the danger. But some deep-seated instinct told him that she had been all too aware and had known exactly how to cope with it. She’d stood up to them and she’d stood up to him.
He allowed himself a brief smile of admiration as he remembered her gutsy response to his command that she meet him in his office.
She’d remembered his caustic remark about her filing her nails and she’d thrown it back at him.
No, Katy had definitely changed. She’d dropped the innocent act—and they both knew that it had been nothing more than an act—and she was showing a level of courage that frankly surprised him. There were still hints of the feminine fragility that she’d shown at eighteen, but he sensed a strength and determination that hadn’t been there before.
